Manual

today I am doing something that has long been on my "life skills I want to acquire because they are awesome" list:

I am learning to drive stick shift.

I am weirdly quite nervous about it. poor Jana is going to have pretty bad whiplash.

Cuckoo

you know the way Ted from How I met your Mother feels about the original Star Wars?

That's pretty much how I feel about the Sound of Music.

In sickness and in health, in good times and in bad times. For the rest of all eternity.

By the way, if you have never watched How I met your Mother, start now.

Home

Flying home for the holidays can get really complicated when you've accepted that home is a nebulous concept. the same can be said for visiting family.

Anyway, I am pretty sure the holidays are going to be epic this year. The Christmas goodies are already on the shelves at Rewe, which I am going to interpret as awesome foreshadowing.

titter

another little something that makes me incredibly happy:

www.awkwardfamilyphotos.com

lordy, I have never ell oh elled so much at a website. check it out.

also worth googling: Caga Tio, a Catalonian Christmas tradition

the ball is rolling

Potential next life step:

how about being an Au Pair in Switzerland?

Ooooh boy, I am going to eat so much Raclette and Birchermüsli.

desperate cry for something to do

hello!

I am back from France which was lovely.



A few highlights:
-Switzerland! being called a true Walliserin by a stranger, being asked if the little white translucent balls that come with Raclette were Litchis, dancing on stage with NERD
-sleeping in our car in Villefrance sur Mer
-lots and lots of Provencal markets
-FIGS
-the multiculturalism of Marseille
-unexpected beauty around every corner
-finally looking like I don't have a sun allergy

Autumn is subtly making it's way back into Southern Germany. When this subtlety came to my attention I asked myself "where did the summer go?"

Oh right, summer went to Indonesia and France. That's not all too bad.

Anyway, I don't want to make this post all too gripey, but here goes:

It's time for something new. There is nothing more that is really keeping my in Freiburg, and I am excited to see something new and exciting. I am looking, I really am. I am applying myself, I really am. But I can't seem to find anything to do with my life!

So, if you or your brother or your cousin or your dog walker have any ideas, I am open for everything. The sooner the better!

Serwana

I finally have access to a few of the thousands of pictures taken in Indonesia and I thought I would tell you a little bit about my favorite (?) stop while there, which also happened to be a matter of little planning.

Ron, the proprietor of the expat-haven we had been staying at for the first 10 nights of my trip, kept telling us that we absolutely had to visit a town called Serwana, approximately an hour and a half east of Pelabuhan Ratu. He told us to ask for "Sir City Leader" (in Indonesian of course, but I cannot for the life of me remember what the word for "city leader" is) and said that we could undoubtedly stay with him. We were promised white sand beaches, crystal clear waters and kamikaze waves, which I was all about because it meant I would have some company on the beach.

So, we loaded up in a minibus not disimilar to this one



and made our way to Serwana. Now, we were told that it was quite primitive, but I would say that was being generous. "Sir City Leader" was the city leader probably because he was the patriarch of the only family around for miles. Ok, ok, that's an exaggeration, but it was quite small. Sir City Leader was by profession a guitar maker, so all of his sons and grandsons were excellent musicians and we spent a few nights drinking Indonesian whiskey and sweet red wine (tasted like skittles) while being forced to sing awkwardly along. Highlights include several rousing renditions of "My heart will go on" and a young-at-heart Australian teaching us all of the lyrics to "Sex on Fire" by Kings of Leon.

After a delicious breakfast of banana pancakes and sweet tea we would cross this bridge



and make our way through goat herds and coconut farms to the beach! Indeed the sand was white, the water was clear and, as an added bonus, there were sea shells everywhere!



This beach also happened to be my one of my favorites because the guys couldn't surf, and they are prone to get a little stir crazy which leads to things like extreme yoga



While on the beach we ran into the Australian's much much younger Indonesian wife (who, for me had the best line of the entire trip. while we were singing "my heart will go on" she screamed to her husband "Honey! All the people's faces, men and women, are sama sama" by which I can only imagine meant "the same") who invited us to grill with her and a few of her friends. They grabbed some fish out of the tide pools, fashioned some skewers out of palm fronds and built a fire with dried up coconuts.



We proceeded to eat the fish using a banana leaf as our plates and man, I have got to tell you, it was the bomb.



It may not shock any of you to say that any food-related memory is likely to rank high on my list of favorite memories. Hence this one coming first.